Somehow I either forgot completely to write last week’s training recap or typed it up and lost the post somehow. Thus, this week’s entry will take up a little more space.
The weather has gotten tremendously warmer and muggier. Greenville decided to skip spring entirely. Over the past several years, I have learned, quite well, that my body does not perform anywhere near optimally in the kind of weather that plagues my hometown during a large portion of the summer and spring and fall. Okay, the year. As I work to optimize my performance for this marathon, I keep analyzing my environment, my nutrition and other factors to see where I can make the changes necessary to help.
One of the things that I believe has infected several areas of my life is the end of year lethargy that comes at the close of a school year, especially one that has been as stressful (and many times rewarding) as this one. One of the things I have learned as I have analyzed my performance during this training cycle is just how much work stress affected my performance. Over the past week or so, I have also seen how the lethargy has affected my performance. As the year rapidly draws to a close and the marathon approaches, I know that I need to kick it into high gear and push myself out of the lethargy.
Week 8
Monday 45 minutes recover
I felt remarkably recovered after the difficult half the Saturday before which makes me sure that a lot of what made it difficult was the ridiculous heat and humidity. I maintained good form with no lingering fatigue. Later that day I read a Boston Marathon recap and felt reenergized in my pursuit of the BQ goal.
Tuesday 55 minutes with hard effort intervals near end
Since Mom had a long day ahead, I ran this one on my own. I lay in bed that morning and nearly talked myself out of running. I decided to get up and push through and felt pretty good. More than physically, I felt mentally strong for overcoming the negative thoughts and the urge to stay in bed.
Wednesday strength training
This workout contained nothing out of the ordinary. Pushed hard. Focused on form. Rough work stuff came at the end of the day and I ended up indulging in a pack of Twizzlers. Cleaning up my diet is definitely something I am focusing on going forward. I have fallen off the eliminating added sugar bandwagon and have started to indulge in stress eating, not bad, but not a good habit to start developing.
Thursday stationary bike
I could not get up the motivation to run that morning. I know that it had to do with the work stress from the previous day. I still got out of the house though and over to the gym for the stationary bike. I ran about reading instead and got some much needed motivation.
Friday tempo run
I almost took a break in the middle of this tempo run simply because mentally I thought I needed it. I overcame those mental doubts and pushed through and ended up loving the run.
Saturday 170 minutes easy
It took a little while to warm up, likely because I pushed the tempo run to the day before. I felt pretty good for the first part but since we started later than we should have, the heat and humidity quickly came out in full force. It nearly got the better of both me and Mom but we persevered with plenty of walk breaks. I felt so drained by the heat and humidity but pushed through, later finding out that by the time I finished the temps had reached almost 90 degrees. That will definitely affect performance.
Week 9
Monday 55 minutes easy
Over the long weekend I took every advantage and slept late, for me at least. I ended up averaging 8 hours a night instead of 7 over the weekend. I’m pretty sure that’s the reason why Monday’s run was one of the best runs I have had in quite a long time. I cannot even remember the last time I felt that good on a run. I remembered that day a blog I had read recently written by another runner who had talked about sleep and it’s “performance enhancing” effects. After this run, I fully believe it. I decided that I would try from that point on to get as close to 8 hours of sleep as possible. It worked a few nights but it’s still a work in progress.
Tuesday progression run
At the start I doubted whether I would be able to complete this run as prescribed. (I wish I had written down more detail in my running log because I do not at this time remember what exactly I doubted.) I pushed through the progression portion of the run and proved to myself that I am definitely capable of this sort of work.
Wednesday strength training
Unfortunately, I waited too long to remember the details. Often in the morning I have little time to write down details about the workouts if I want to get to school on time.
Thursday postponed run due to tiredness
This time, unlike last week (Tuesday) I could not motivate myself to get out of bed and complete the run. I did not even feel nearly as tired as I have before when I have postponed the runs. I simply failed to summon enough mental fortitude to get out of bed.
Friday Intervals
I shortchanged myself on these intervals by taking the recoveries much slower than I needed too. I think I convinced myself that I needed slower intervals and then neglected to even attempt to talk myself out of it. The intervals themselves felt great although at first they felt really hard. That’s when I realized that I accidentally ran the first two intervals about 20 seconds faster than I was supposed to. I also quickly lost track of the number. (I was supposed to get to 10) so I have no idea if I made it or not. I simply ran until I reached the 55 minute mark so I could have 5 minutes of cool down and be able to get out of the gym after an hour…my limit on school days. This wasn’t a bad run, but it could have and should have been much more like a workout.
Saturday 170 minutes with 5 hard effort intervals near the end
Mom and I learned our lesson from the previous week and started more than an hour earlier. That made a tremendous difference. Both of us felt fantastic. Since we started from her place, that meant many more hills to traverse, difficult hills. I should run this route more often since San Francisco has a few hills. Throughout the majority of the 2 hours 10 minutes I planed to run with Mom (the hard effort intervals would come after I stopped back at the house to refill my water bottle with Gatorade and she headed off to get our post-run refreshments) I felt great, drenched in sweat but great! We both commented on how much better we felt than the previous week. Then, half an hour before the end of this first part, the monster hill on East North street near Mitchell Road, raised its ugly head. There’s no shade there. THe sun had come out in full force. What little advantage we gained from an earlier start dissipated. Things quickly went downhill after that. My legs started protesting every incline after that and there are quite a few. I knew that the portion of the route planned for after I broke off from Mom had even more hills and I was supposed to get in hard effort intervals. I had no idea how I would be able to do it. I made the decision then in the face of the conditions and the outrageous temperatures to run the remainder on the treadmill at home since that meant I could drink the refill of Gatorade in my car and make more when I got home. That portion at home took forever too. I ended up nixng the hard effort intervals entirely. I simply wanted to get to the end of the forty minutes. I had to take short breaks every ten minutes of that last forty minutes. I hated that what started out as a great run ended up as it did. My only thought is that even though I took in more hydration than I usually do, I still did not take enough in early on and I need to figure out how to better prepare my body to perform in this kind of weather.